Title:  Home Repair
Author:  Liz Rosenberg
Release date:  April 28, 2009
Publisher:  Avon A.
Pages:  352
Genre:  Women’s fiction
Source:  Author

In a nice house, in a quiet suburban neighborhood, on the day of their garage sale, Eve’s husband Chuck walks out on her.  He leaves her alone with their daughter, Noni, age nine, and Eve’s son Marcus, age seventeen.  This would be shocking enough for the average woman, but for Eve, it is beyond shocking, as her first husband, her beloved Ivan, died in a car accident thirteen years earlier.  Not only has one man abandoned her with a young child, now two men in a row have done just that.  But life goes on, of course, and with Eve’s cast of friends and family members around her to shield her from her pain and help her with the kids, she is really never alone.

That summary was kind of paltry, I’ll admit.  The reason for that is that I don’t have much to say about Home Repair, not much that would really help make you want to read the book.  It’s a sweet story, with decent characters, it just wasn’t overall my cup of tea.

I think the main issue I had with the novel is that it was sort of bland.  I liked Eve, I even wanted good things to happen to her, but her personality just sort of was… blah. It wasn’t anything I could grab onto, she was not a character I could fall in love with.  In fact, my favorite character was probably her mother, Charlotte, but even Charlotte was almost like a caricature of what a funny older woman is like rather than an actual older woman.  I liked the kids, especially Noni, but they weren’t all that interesting either, to be honest.  Everyone was sort of nice and sweet and kind, regular people, but they weren’t anything special, anything exciting.  They weren’t at all complex.

Also, I was over halfway through the book when I had the sudden realization that I didn’t much care what direction it would take.  That’s horrible, right?  I feel bad admitting that.  But it was really how I felt at that point, and although I finished the novel, I could have easily gone either way.  It just didn’t leave too profound an impact on me.

Still, if you enjoy sweet stories about families, along the lines of “women’s fiction”, you may really enjoy Home Repair.  It was not a bad story, by any means, it just did not resonate with me personally.  For another take on the novel, check out Kristen’s review or The Kool Aid Mom’s review – they both really liked it!